The subject matter disclosed herein relates to litter boxes.
Owners of household pets (e.g., cats), use litter boxes to provide the pet with a location in the household to release urine and feces. In a typical litter box, the pet climbs into the litter box and disposes of urine and feces into the litter, which must be cleaned periodically to remove the waste (e.g., clumped litter from urine and solid feces).
Manual litter boxes come in a number of different designs, including simple litter pans and sifting litter boxes. A simple litter pan, which may be opened or covered with a hood, requires that the litter be manually cleaned with a hand held scoop to dig into the litter and remove or separate the waste from the litter. Sifting litter boxes include an integrated grate lining the bottom of the litter pan. To clean the litter, the grate is lifted up through the litter or the litter is poured through the grate, enabling the grate to capture the waste without the use of a scoop.
Although inexpensive, these manual litter boxes, which are often not aesthetically pleasing, present a number of challenges to both the pet and the pet owner. Many manual litter boxes are not deep or wide enough to provide adequate space for larger pets. In addition, many pets do not like the feel of the sifting grate in sifting litter boxes when they are digging into the litter. For manual litter boxes that must be cleaned with a scoop, this must be done frequently and can be labor intensive. The scooping process can be highly unpleasant, requiring the pet owner to kneel down or bend over to access the litter, which is typically malodorous and dusty and can be quite heavy when soiled. Scooping the waste out of the manual litter box is often made more difficult when the litter sticks to the sides or the box or resides in the corners of the box, which are hard to access with the scoop, which is typically not ergonomically designed. For sifting litter boxes, pouring the filtered litter back into the box over the grate can be heavy and awkward. Open manual litter boxes also allow the pets to kick or otherwise move litter outside of the manual litter box, requiring additional cleaning by the pet owner. Closed litter boxes, using hoods, can resolve the problem of litter escaping the litter box, but do not allow for sufficient air circulation and are not preferred by many pets, which dislike the enclosed space of the litter box.
Given the disadvantages associated with manual litter boxes, automatic litter boxes, including those with combing mechanisms, rotation mechanisms, and self washing systems, are offered. While the automatic litter boxes can improve upon manual litter boxes, they are expensive and require complicated connections to electrical and/or water sources to operate, which may not be available in the desired location for the litter box. Furthermore, the automatic litter boxes employing combing mechanisms often have difficulty removing larger waste or can miss smaller waste that is not captured by the tines, which must be cleaned periodically to remove waste. In addition, these automatic litter boxes are loud in operation and frequently require replacement of disposable parts, further increasing costs.
The discussion above is merely provided for general background information and is not intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.